Page 2 of 2

Re: Maps

Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2016 12:19 pm
by fernao
Wouldn't know how to do that and yet pertain all the information especially the zoom functionality due to the sheer size of the displayed area.

Feel free to convert them yourself though. ;)

Re: Maps

Posted: Mon Nov 06, 2017 8:16 am
by Israfel
Hi all

I recently started playing Geas and lurking the forums here for useful info. The discussion here caught my interest as I had wondered about some of the same things Ferranifer mentioned (unique room IDs etc) when I first started. I still am wondering, how do other players get around in Geas? Do people generally use their own recorded walks/runs, aliases etc? Or use the 'follow road west' type functionality? (Alternatively if unique room IDs exits and I just haven't found them yet I would love to know)

Adding to the earlier posts though, having come from playing a MUD for a long time that had all the mapping functionality handed to newbies at the start, my first impression of Geas was a bit like going back in time to my first mudding experience of mentally 'mapping' where things are and getting my bearings that way. It certainly has made me not want to wander out too far from Arborea to start with. Honestly, I both like and dislike that at the same time:
Like because = mystery of mapless mudding, thoughtful exploration, slower pace, nostalgia
Dislike because = accessibility, user friendliness, functionality, not to mention the first impression factor for retaining new players.

Anyway, I'm a Mushclient user. That's what I'm used to. I'm not much of a scripter but I've been tinkering around with a way to help me keep my bearings in Geas. For now, it's a rough 'coordinates' plugin that creates 'artificial' (because it's basically a guess) latitude, longitude and altitude based on which direction I move and how 'far' I travel.

Here's a sample:
Starting with coordinates X Y Z of 0, 0, 0 (ie the center point).
It will change based on info like "You travel a medium distance west."

So first it gives 'medium' distance a value of say "0.4", like this:

distance = {
["medium"] = 0.4,
}

Then sets out how each direction should impact the coordinates. So for west it will be:

direction = {
west = { x = -1, y = 0, z = 0},
}

Then it's just distance x direction and (0,0,0) becomes (-0.4,0,0)

Now I know this is imperfect and it will be incorrect often. For example, when sneaking there is no "You travel a medium distance.." message. However, it has helped me with the general idea of keeping my bearings.

I attempted to use the coordinates to create room uids and it goes OK in simple areas. I expect it would be too much trouble in more complex areas though. Here's a snapshot of me mapping a few rooms around western Arborea with it:
Geas_map_experiment.PNG
(If you look closely you'll see errors even in this simple experiment with it. It also displays really wonky because of all the types of exits I tried to have it recognise :P )

If any fellow MUSHclient users are interested in the above I'm happy to share. Still tinkering.

Re: Maps

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 3:32 am
by Delia
Hi,

Using stacked commands to move, while not explicitly forbidden, is frowned upon. Mainly because it makes you quite safe and immune to many things that might happen along the way. Discourteous, I would say. But this is just my opinion :)

I personally use follow road. It is mighty fine.

As for maps I habitually map everything and have memorized most of the maps. I tend not to use them and go from memory unless pressed for time. Not remembering every nook and cranny 110% makes your play and character less robotic for me and leaves room for some scholarly absentmindedness too :)

Re: Maps

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2017 1:42 pm
by Arsicas
I tend to just picture things mentally, though I've made maps of certain areas (usually those that are particularly confusing) that I will consult. I haven't ever seriously played a mud with a mapping feature though, so it's kind of what I'm used to. Actually, making my own maps of areas is kind of fun, and I will sometimes come across things I didn't notice originally. :)

I'll usually use the follow road feature for long stretches like Arborea to Elvandar. And the 'walk' command was recently added that lets you follow a certain path as long as you are able. I have some routes memorized (like the way to Gwen's hut) so that the commands just kind of come automatically.

Re: Maps

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:34 pm
by ferranifer
Israfel wrote:Attempts at mapping
This probably comes too late but Turian was experimenting with implementing GMCP and had it working, with little testing being done by po Aslak and yours truly. It offered unique hashes for each room, which will solve the room identification issue. It also included other useful bits like a complete list of exits (to your character's knowledge) and exit types. IIRC it does not include coordinates and all knowledge returned is limited to what your character knows. I.e. I'd expect maze rooms (i.e. swamps) to return scrambled exit lists.

Code: Select all

LOCATION-package DATA

 "exits"       -> mapping of exits with exit type
 "hash"        -> has-id of the room (if avaibale)
 "inside"      -> send by inside rooms
 "short"       -> short desc of the room
 "temperature" -> temperature in the room
 "type"        -> type of the room
See 'help atcp2' in game.

You gotta ask Turian to enable it for you though. It'd be awesome if someone had the time to spend on creating a basic Mushclient/Mudlet setup so people could do their own mapping.

I would advise against providing the map data itself.

Re: Maps

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2018 10:22 pm
by Israfel
Far out. I had no idea Geas had GMCP functionality.

This makes things much more straightforward. I don't think it'd be beyond me to put that into a MUSH plugin.

With the kind of info supplied by that package it could make for a really useful mini-window display of basic info about your surroundings and vitals - leaving the main window free to contain events, actions and dialogue.

Agree with you about the map data. The way I'd see it working would be where the plugin tells MUSH how to build a map database with the info. But every player creates their own database from scratch through exploration.

Re: Maps

Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2018 12:15 am
by Israfel
Ok, having looked over the helpfile now and a few MUSHclient resources, I can say it's definitely possible to put together a basic Geas MUSHclient package for people to use and build their own maps from.

There are a couple of atcp/gmcp handler and mapper plugins already around that look like they'd be pretty straightforward to adapt to Geas.

A question about the exits info though, and the overall type of mapper it would allow... The current atcp2 "exits" package supplies types:
exit-types:
undefined -1
room-type 1-13
road 100
door 101 (closed -101)
hall 102
yard 103
path 104
And "hash" supplies the unique room identifier (if it's appropriate for the room to have one).

That'd give you a basic map builder where it would recognise movement in a single direction between two unique rooms. It'd be able to draw a one-way link between two hashes but we'd have to set up MUSHclient to correctly detect two pieces of info reliably:
1. a recognised 'direction/movement' command entered by the user, followed by
2. a new "hash" supplied by the MUD indicating a successful move to a new room.

The drawback with this appraoch is that you can sometimes confuse the mapper by moving without entering a common direction command (such as fleeing, sneaking, irregular exits etc) or moving too quickly. It also means that to map a road going north-south, for example, you'd have to walk in and out of each exit to each room to make it two-way. Things can get pretty messy, and it's a lot more work to keep things neat and tidy (and be able to share the functionality with new players for instance).

This could be overcome by extending the gmcp package to providing the "hashes" of rooms where we have recognised exits.

Something like this:
room.info { "num": 5922, "name": "At the entrance of the park", "zone": "zoo", "terrain": "city", "details": "",
"exits": { "e": 5920, "s": 5916, "w": 12611 }, "coord": { "id": 0, "x": 37, "y": 19, "cont": 0 } }
In the example above (from Aardwolf GMCP package), the first number "5922" is the current room, and we also know the room east of us is "5920". When we move east, it'd tell us that west of us is now "5922", giving us a reliable set of info to map from and saving us having to backtrack every step.

Of course, sometimes it's not appropriate for us to know the destination of an exit. So the package would need to also indicate where rooms are intentional unknowns or unmappables:
room.info { "num": -1, "name": "Emerald Clan Room", "zone": "emerald", "terrain": "",
"details": "", "exits": {}, "coord": { "id": -1, "x": -1, "y": -1 } }
I guess where I'm going with this is that the two different packages (one with exit hashes, one without) require different types of mapper scripts. I know which one I prefer (the reliable "exit hashses" version). If something like that is on the cards for the future, or if admins are open to the idea of extending that in GMCP, I'd be keen to know before trying to develop a mapper for Geas in MUSH.

I'm pretty interested in doing something with this though so will try to catch Turian online.

Israfel

Re: Maps

Posted: Wed Aug 01, 2018 9:32 am
by Israfel
For any new players who come across this thread.

An automatic GMCP mapper plugin is now available for Geas. It can be previewed on a new thread on General board here viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2679&p=31297#p31297

Please contact me through the forums if you are interested in using it.

Israfel